Extended ram

[parabyte]

So what options is there for extending the ram?
I used to build and sell xtide boards here in the uk. So am aware of the crude xms board "2MB"
is there any instructions on how one might get this up and running a elks system?
to continue doing silly projects that just use too much ram!?

[ghaerr]

ELKS makes a BIOS call to get the amount of XMS memory, and that memory then becomes usable within ELKS when xms=on is set in /bootopts. Therefore, the BIOS must "know" about the XMS memory either its own mechanism for finding it, or using a BIOS menu for entering the amount of memory installed.

Note however, that XMS memory is only used for system buffers, HMA kernel, and/or RAM disks in ELKS. Applications cannot run in XMS memory, and there's not (yet) a kernel API for allocating XMS memory to applications for their own use, although there could be. An application API is a little complicated (just like DOS extended memory managers) because the system uses 386+ "unreal" mode or 286 LOADALL which depend on the CPU's shadow segment register limit registers for reading or writing any 64k block of XMS memory.

Therefore, if your idea is to use XMS for IRC client or server access for a large client or server, there's some engineering to be done and a C library API developed which can also be shared with the kernel's internal usage. Your application(s) would have to be specially designed as well, since only one 64k segment at a time can be accessed from any application, and this could get very complicated if/when multiple applications desire XMS and are multitasked (e.g. time-sliced), whcih would require resetting the application's XMS window every 10ms time slice!

[parabyte]

I may find a well known dos extender and look at its code, get a feel for how things are done there.
I got borland installed, never tried looking for the extender source, so that be my first port of call as they say.
ideally a specific 8088/8086 extender would be better, but I am terribly not good with assembly thats not really a interest of mine.
so would to be in C really or C++ so i can understand what i am looking at etc.